


Will of the Wisp, or The Second-Deadliest Game.

by aomach



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bestiality, F/M, Hunting, Mystery, Other, Tentacles, Violence, begins with some worldbuilding/setup, equius isn't actually in this one, is it consensual to have sex with a wild beast that's trying to seduce you?, just something that looks eerily like him, let's find out together, seduce you for the purposes of eating you?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:26:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22221775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aomach/pseuds/aomach
Summary: Alternia is a vast world, and many secrets hide in its deepest forests. Nepeta Leijon goes on the hunt for one of them, with results both strangely alien and strangely familiar.
Relationships: Nepeta Leijon/Not-Really-Equius Zahhak
Kudos: 7





	1. The Village.

**Author's Note:**

> The first three chapters are Worldbuilding, I guess. Be warned though it gets wild after that.

Given its status as the capital world of the galaxy’s greatest interstellar empire, you’d be surprised to learn just how much wilderness Alternia has. Much of the continental interior is wild and untamed. Some of the great forests grow amidst the ruins of milennia-old cities, abandoned since the great exodus of the adult population to the stars. But others are more ancient still, and have gone utterly untouched since the dawn of troll civilization. 

In the depths of the largest old-growth forest of them all lies a quaint troll village, full of humble hives that have been passed down from troll to troll over the sweeps with little alteration. Very few trolls live in such villages these days, as the mother grubs and trial caverns that fuel the troll population are usually located under major population centers, and travel this far into the countryside is usually impractical for young trolls. This village has survived on the grace of having its own independent mother grub, a small and sluggish offshoot of the mainline mothers that only lays a couple eggs each sweep. Passing travelers have often wondered why such an insignificant town is allowed to have such a unique luxury, but the authorities have never seemed to care.

The village’s reproductive system resembles the global one in miniature, with a handful of crusty old pail drones housed in a shed next to the gristleworm farms, a pathetic little trial cavern that passes nearly every hatchling that enters it with full marks, and a small genetic slurry ‘cavern’ that’s basically just an open pit in the central square. Any of the village’s residents passing by on their way to buy produce or hang out in the village tavern can look down and see all their private juices swirling around and intermingling with those of the other 34 inhabitants. All of whom are definitely pretty closely related to each other. Even on Alternia, the old stereotypes about rural folk being massively inbred still apply.

This village has been standing in the same spot in the old-growth woods for as long as anyone can remember, and certainly far longer. Ancient records from long before the hatching (landing) of even the Condesce herself more than 20,000 sweeps ago have mentioned the presence of this village in passing. And even then, at the dawn of the first great troll civilizations, the village was said to be old as time. Throughout it all, the same batch of genetic material has been percolating through this tiny community of rustbloods, bronzebloods, and olivebloods, feeding back into itself endlessly and slowly diverging from that of the rest of the Empire. Visitors are struck by how short the forest dwellers all are, how their hands seem sturdier and almost shovel-like for digging in the rich forest soil, how they all, regardless of blood type seem to have the same set of curved stubby horns. To be sure, adult trolls from this community head out for the colonies the same as any other, spreading their genetic peculiarities out into the galaxy. But crucially, there’s nothing feeding outsider genes back in.

And after all this time and mystery, it’s no surprise that a couple legends have sprung up around the forest-dwellers. Certain niche corners of the Alternian internet are facinated by them. Some say their mother grub is fed with the flesh of visitors who are unwise enough to stay there overday. Others say their intimate connection with the land has granted them mastery over the forces of nature, and that every acid storm and every deadly plague that strikes broader civilization is the result of an angry forest-dweller’s whim. Still others claim they represent a secret project by the Condesce to breed a new class of soldiers for the war effort, perfect for digging under enemy lines and infiltrating alien countrysides.

But the legend that interests Nepeta Leijon the most is one allegedly told to a traveler by the villagers themselves. They say that once every apogee, if you stand at the edge of the tuber patches just after sunset and gaze into the dark forest, you may see a glowing figure standing out there. A tall and beautiful figure, with an irresistibly enticing aura about it. Most who see it follow it into the night without hesitation. None of them return.

This spectre has apparently been haunting the village since time immemorial, and older residents warn hatchlings of its danger with nursery rhymes. Nevertheless, despite a yearly crop of hatchlings nearly twice the number of trolls graduating to the colonies, the village’s population is never seen to rise.


	2. Nepetaquest 2020.

Nepeta doesn’t believe in spectres. Well no, she does, she’s seen one of her friends summon up a whole bunch of them, but she doesn’t believe in THIS one. She feels pretty confident that whatever the forest menace is, it can be killed with razor-sharp claws. And in an adventurous mood, she’s set out to prove that. She leaves behind her comfortable cave for another hunt, a bit more apprehensively than usual. The forest-dwellers are much further afield than she’s ever hunted before. And on top of that her beloved guardian Pounce isn’t going to be accompanying her, seeing as she’s in the midst of her annual Lusus Heat and is thus a bit useless at present. Miss Leijon isn’t letting any of that stop her though.

She took the regional grub-bus as far as it went, until the chitin-paved streets gave way to churned mud and the last signs of civilized troll life faded away. She had about thirty miles left to go on foot, which even with her cat-like agility and a couple planned shortcuts through the woods would surely take her the rest of the night. 

The forests here are vast and dark, the age-wrinkled bark of each tree a deep navy blue. There are no flowers on the forest floor, even during the peak daylight hours nowhere near enough light filters through the broad boughs of wide fuchsia leaves to sustain them. Now, in the dead of night, the only light here comes from dim bioluminescent worms living up in the treetops. The ground is covered only with a deep layer of dead leaves, slowly accumulating ever since the first sprouts grew here millions and millions of sweeps ago. Nepeta is struck with a profound sense of peace and serenity as she sprints through this ancient natural cathedral at cheetah speed. She is awed by the quiet beauty of the wild as she does a wallrun along the side of a fallen log, frontflips off it, then makes a series of leaps from tree trunk to tree trunk 20 feet above the ground. The wind flattens her hair back as she splits the serene sylvan air, quietly contemplating the insignificance of her existence relative to the silent beings around her.

Nepeta finally skids into town just before sunrise, finding herself on the outskirts suddenly, the trees coming to an end without warning. She takes in the view. The entire clearing housing the village is narrower than the trees are tall, though that really says more about the absurd vertical scale of the prehistoric forest than anything else. The run-down hives cluster in the clearing’s center, with humble farm plantings all around. Nepeta strolls towards the warm lights of the village center, catching her breath. 

A pair of bronzebloods with glowworms twined in their hair are playing a bastardized two-player version of Arena Stickball in the middle of the street, earning the glares of a couple 8-sweep-olds sitting on a nearby porch, who shake their fists at the youngsters with geriatric fury. The taller of the two bronzebloods spots the outsider coming up the road, and with a mischievous grin thwacks a heavy iron ball in Nepeta’s direction. She effortlessly dodges the missile, which sails out into the woods and impacts a tree with a deep, satisfying thock. A blue rain of glowworms shaken down from the treetop patters onto the forest floor. Nepeta looks back at the still-grinning bronzeblood assailant. “can’t say i remember that purrt of arena stickball.” She’s of course referring to the part where the ball hit a tree. The part where the ball was sent flying toward her face with apparent intent to kill was entirely standard.

\- - -

The rustblood barkeeper in the village’s only tavern gives the dirty, sweaty outsider in front of her a sleepily suspicious look. “What can we do for ya, kid?” Kid, huh. Nepeta can’t help but notice the barkeeper is at least a sweep younger than her. She places a coin on the counter. “hi there, might you pawsibly have a room i could sl33p in today? what are your purrices?” “Oh spirits, that quirk! I’m so glad we missed out on that nightmare of a custom, I don’t know how anyone in the outside world tolerates that for more than 5 minutes.”

The barkeep continues. “*cough* Well in any case, yes. We do have a spare guest room. By which I mean we have one guest room total in the entire establishment. I think you’re the first troll to rent it out since sweeps before I was hatched.” “sounds like visitors are a scarcekitty around these purrts, huh?” Nepeta ends up putting a little more emphasis on her cat puns than she perhaps intended. The barkeep cringes visibly, then hands Nepeta her room key. “By the way,” the barkeep says, “you sure have chosen an…… interesting time to visit. Take my advice and don’t meddle too much in our affairs. For your own sake.” “uh-huh……” Nepeta replies cautiously. 

Resolving to meddle to the greatest extent of her ability, she heads off to her room. The guest room certainly looks like it’s been unlived in for decades, she has to pull a six-inch thick slab of dried sopor slime out of the opening of the recuperacoon to find any usable liquid. When she strips off and gets in the slime certainly feels ancient as well, with a sort of coarse mealy texture that it’s really best not to think about too much. Nevertheless the moment the faded green slop closes over her shoulders she’s unconscious as a rock, in the deepest, most restful kind of sleep.


	3. Voices on the Wood’s Edge.

And before she knows it she’s awake again. She remembers no dreams, and with how rested she’s feeling she might as well have slept in the Condesce’s recuperacoon. The searing light of evening is still cutting through the gaps in the dodecablinds, with the beginnings of sunset’s greenish tinge seeping into them. Wasting no time, Nepeta’s out of the recuperacoon and busy toweling the prehistoric sleep lubricant residue off her skin before donning her hunting apparel again. By the time she’s downstairs and out the front door of the currently empty tavern, the last sunset rays have disappeared into the trees, and whether or not the star’s yet dipped below the actual horizon is irrelevant- the forest has decided it’s nighttime now.

The streets of the village are deserted as Nepeta paces silently through them. These quaint rural folk probably just haven’t woken up yet, she reasons. The streets of this village barely qualify as a plural anyway, there’s really only a road leading through it east to west (she came in on this road from the west), a short cross-street running north-south, and a sort of roundabout where they meet in the middle, encircling a small garden, the village execution platform, and of course the slurry pit. Nepeta’s walking past the slurry pit now, and the strong musky scent wafting up from it is making her feel things. A fair portion of those things are revulsion. But hey, she’s been hunting huge musclebeasts her whole life. When it comes to musky smells, she’s smelled worse.

And then she hears it. Off behind some hives, to the southeast out beyond the tuber patches, someone is singing. Several someones. In fact, if Nepeta were to put a solid integer on the number of voices she could hear, she could do worse than to say 35. The music is utterly alien to Nepeta’s ears, totally distinct from every musical tradition in the whole empire on a level so fundamental she doesn’t know where to begin describing it. She cautiously rounds a corner and looks out across the tuber field.

Standing in a line at the edge of the deep dark forest is the entire population of the village, all dressed in richly embroidered black and purple robes. Nepeta can hear the words they’re singing now, and she can tell immediately it’s in an entirely distinct language from any other. East Alternian might as well be a regional dialect in comparison. There’s no question, this is a tongue passed down since prehistory. She scans the line of singers more closely now. She recognizes the barkeeper way over on the right and the stickball-playing bronzebloods from earlier in the center, glow-worms still twined in their hair. She looks closer still, and notices that every one of the forest-dwellers has tied themselves with sturdy ropes to nearby trees. Every one, except for the tall bronzeblood, the one that tried to knock her brains out with a stickball last night.

And then the singing reaches a glorious pinnacle, and she sees it, they all see it. Way off in the distance, in the tiniest, furthest gap in the trees, a glowing blue figure steps out from the shadows. From this distance the figure’s features and gender are utterly indeterminate, and might even be shifting from moment to moment. But what Nepeta does know for sure is that this thing is exerting a strong attraction on her, an intense longing for wild fantasy, a nostalgia for a past that was never hers. She takes a few steps across the tuber patch before she manages to hold herself in place, if only for a second.

And if the exertion is strong on her, it’s ten times stronger on the forest-dwellers. The moment the figure appeared their singing was punctuated by a shout of joy and a mad dash forward, arrested immediately by the sturdy ropes they had the foresight to secure themselves with. The ropes cut deep into their robed waists but their singing only becomes louder, if now warped and strained into disharmony by intense emotion. The only forest dweller who doesn’t seem to lose all control is the tall bronzeblood, the only unsecured one. When the figure appeared his singing didn’t waver for a moment, as he began simply walking forward into the forest with unhurried pace. Nepeta knows wordlessly and contextlessly that this troll is at peace with his fate. He will answer the force that calls him soon enough, why hurry?

The bronzeblood’s silhouette soon disappears into the darkness of the forest, his progress into the unknown now marked only by the luminescent blue worms twined in his hair. Nepeta has unthinkingly taken a few more steps across the tuber patch now, straining to see into the deep wood. It’s very hard to see indeed, but it seems as if the spectre(?)’s form has solidified now, into the shape of a towering adult male troll. The bronzeblood is silhouetted again against the spectre, and then a strange mist rolls in and obscures everything save for a vague blue glow. The forest-dwellers have fallen silent now, and the irresistible exertion seems to have been released. But still everyone peers into the gloom hungrily, trying to catch a glimpse of the beauties or horrors it might contain. And then, impossibly far away, there is a scream. And another. It’s funny, Nepeta can’t quite pinpoint the exact emotion they express. A few more, and a last scream cut short. Okay, she thinks, that last one was definitely pain.

The blue glow begins to fade now, and the forest dwellers begin to gather themselves and move to untie their rope moorings. Nepeta moves quickly and silently to hide herself behind the nearby pail drone shed as they turn around, but notes as she does how painful the villagers’ movements are. They were pretty much cutting themselves in half trying to run out there, it’s like they have some innate susceptibility to this thing’s attraction. Nepeta notices colorful tears streaming down their grey cheeks, whether from joy or loss she is not equipped to tell.

The blue glow in the deep forest is just about gone now, and Nepeta realizes she must act fast if she wants to track this thing tonight. From her hiding spot behind the shed, she darts behind a low hedgerow and then dashes into the forest, moving with the speed of a hurricane and the silence of a stealth battleship into the serene midnight wood. She slows to a walk once she’s in the thick of the forest, her feline eyes dilating to their greatest perception, filling out the dark shapes of the trees with valuable detail. The distant glow is gone now, but patches of slightly disturbed earth left behind by the disappeared bronzeblood direct her path. 

Nepeta comes to a small clearing. Looking back she can spy a single dim light from the village through the trees, this must have been the spot the spirit appeared in. Scanning and sniffing the floor, she soon finds a spot of interest- a dark patch of earth wet with a viscous substance, which she quickly confirms with a taste as rich brown blood. She scans around some more and spies some badly torn robes and a trail. It’s not a particularly well-hidden trail, it's a dappled swathe of dripped lifeblood and drag marks in the leaves that leads her in a sinuous path through the trees. Nepeta takes off along this path, and it’s not long before she spies the blue glow again. She breaks into a silent sprint, closing in on the cerulean spectre. 

As she draws nearer and the mist thins, Nepeta sees that many of the great trees have been toppled or bashed, leaving a difficult terrain strewn with fallen trunks as wide as a grub-bus. And she could swear that some of the trees ahead are moving about slightly, as unidentifiable sounds strike her ears. She quickly darts into the darkness beneath a great fallen tree. The thrill of the hunt singing in her ears, she creeps past a few more fallen logs and peers curiously over the edge of another. Her eyes widen.


	4. Alternia’s Most Extreme.

And then she sees it in its full horror and glory. She searches a while for words to describe what stands before her, for a place to start trying to encompass the totality of this thing. She realizes that it’s some sort of highly specialized musclebeast, of the same family as her friend Equius’ magnificent portraits. Equius would surely be saddened to see this particular species though, as all its formerly beautifully muscular limbs have clearly atrophied away to almost nothing, dangling uselessly two stories above the forest floor. Its equine head and neck is reduced to a spindly periscope, dozens of feet long but bony and thin, with snaggletoothed pegs for teeth. 

Where its true strengths clearly lie is in its massive udder and numerous teats, which through the magnificent powers of evolution have expanded and multiplied into a vast array of muscular tentacles, each no more than an inch in diameter but bunched together in mighty pillars to support the massive thing’s weight, and all glowing with a cool blue bioluminescence. This ghostly light illuminates a grisly scene on the forest floor, where bunches of wriggling tentacles are tearing chunks of flesh away from the very dead brownblood and passing them up to the demon-like head. Its snaggled teeth rip the chunks into manageable bits and gulp them down. Amid this horror, Nepeta also can’t help but notice the beast’s phallus hanging limp between its atrophied hind limbs. It’s a far cry from the magnificent sizes the more pedestrian musclebeast varieties reach in that area, but it nevertheless dwarfs its stubby little vestigial limbs even in its flaccid state.

As the beast is busy scarfing down its prey, Nepeta makes a move. With a stunning flip she launches out from her hiding spot and swings her claws, severing several wriggling tentacle-teats with her first blow. The instant the glowing blue flesh parts, the beast goes wild with surprise and pain, the first real pain it’s known all its life. It retreats quickly and whips around, tentacles tucked away, and studies its attacker for a moment. 

As she drops back to the ground in a fighting stance, Nepeta feels a wave of emotion wash through her, searching the crannies of her mind for a reaction. A memory is highlighted, and the beast flashes into motion. Its teatacles whip about for a fraction of a section and precisely shape themselves into a figure. A familiar figure, a young male troll with rippling muscles and straight-cropped hair. The allure she felt earlier on the village outskirts returns again, but much stronger and much more personal. An image of Equius Zahhak stands before her, glowing with otherworldly light, reaching his arms out to her, and completely naked.

So this is how it hunts, she muses to herself between waves of beast-induced affection. It identifies your loved ones and shapes itself as them as a lure. Not the worst way to go, she supposes, unthinkingly lowering her claws and stepping toward the blue impostor. She notices with some amusement that Udder-Equius’ spectactularly erect penis is, while fairly large, a long long way from his actual size. She’s seen what he’s working with a couple times, and let’s just say the only things he’s physically capable of penetrating are planet-buster torpedo tubes. The beast’s presumably just trying to give him something that could feasibly fit within her. Which she supposes must be a key component of its hunting strategy. Looking back at the poor mutilated bronzeblood, it kinda looks like the initial cause of death was a… rupture from the inside. Ouch. Maybe not such a good way to go.

The attraction is getting really intense now, and Nepeta’s actually having to fight to keep herself from sprinting headlong into the tentacles. She raises her claws and clears her mind of distractions, then considers her options. You know what, she thinks, I’ve fought and killed so many great beasts over the years. It would be a shame to let it all become same-y. Why not have some fun here? She looks up at the impossibly handsome vision of Equius, retracts her claws and lets the attractive force pull her into a slow stroll towards the waiting lure.


	5. In The Udder of the Beast.

As Nepeta slowly strolls towards the impostor Zahhak, several slender pilot tentacles reach out from the vision’s sides and begin tugging firmly on her clothes, yanking sharply and tearing some threads. The beast clearly doesn’t care about damaging her clothes, seeing as it doesn’t intend her to live to put them back on. Nepeta very much does intend that though, and she doubts the hillbillies back in the village would take well to a nude outsider walking through their streets. She swats the fussing tentacles away and removes her clothing of her own accord, dropping her olive coat behind her first, then her grey sweatpants, then her black sports bra, and finally her black undershorts. She notably doesn’t discard her fingerless gloves and integrated claws, and a couple tentacles poke and prod her tail until they realize it’s cybernetically attached. She stands before the vision now, small, naked and cute, the cool blue bioluminescence playing off her skin.

She’s only a few feet away now, her hands by her sides, her shoulders quivering now with the realization of this alien presence. Up close she can see all the individual teat-tentacles comprising the false Equius, writhing through his form sensually. Their shimmering blue glow casts patterns over her like sunlight through shallow water as the Equius spectre reaches out slowly with slightly shape-shifting hands. When its right hand touches her grey skin, cupping her chin and cheek in a cold, writhing touch, it does so with a gentle tenderness that the real deal could never muster. As its left hand clutches her shoulder, Udder-Equius leans in and kisses her lightly, leaving her with a sensation somewhere between that of fingers lightly ghosting over her lips and that of wriggling worms writhing against them. She shudders, mind going in ten directions at once.

The cold blue worm-hands move down now, cupping at her small breasts. The cold tentacles that comprise the hands feel strange and new against her soft little swells, and more than a little titillating. Nepeta mewls and arches her hips forward, brushing her inner thigh against something. She looks down and sees it’s the fake-Equius’ penis, which the beast has been stealthily moving into position, its component tentacles writhing with anticipation within its shape. Her privates are only inches away, and she draws back in hesitation. But the member keeps coming, and when its cool blue tip kisses her entrance she lets it in, her smooth little lips parting gently, the short mane of hair surrounding her hairless folds brushing against its length. She crumples to her knees as the spectre moves in, leaning back against the cold hard earth as Udder-Equius looms above her with cold unseeing eyes.

The false phallus fills her the perfect amount, its constituent udder-tentacles poking and prodding her vaginal passage in all the right places. Millions of years of natural selection have made this beast really, really good at its job. Nepeta leans into the feeling, a purr rising in her throat as Spectre-Equius thrusts in and out a few times, the teat-strands coiling and uncoiling within her. One little tentacle tickles her clit. Her purr rises and rises and she throws her head back and mewls-

And just then, just as she’s at her most distracted and most vulnerable, the beast moves. The udder-tentacles abandon all pretense of being a handsome and muscular young troll and make a mad rush for Nepeta’s nethers. A large knot of writhing teats manages to force its way through her opening before she snaps out of her orgasmic trance and grabs the glowing blue bundle at the base. With all her uncommon strength she holds them in place, fist held tight against her mons pubis. 

As Nepeta awkwardly pushes herself up into a sitting position with her elbows she can feel the teatacles’ ends wiggling around inside her, trying their hardest to tear her apart from within; it feels really strange and yet a bit thrilling at the same time. Then she feels a couple enterprising tentacles ram against her cervix, trying to force their way up into her womb. She feels an uncomfortable pain at that, which nearly causes her to lose her grip on the strands still trying to force their way into her vagina. Nearly.

Nepeta and the beast are at an impasse. The great beast-spectre is completely unused to trolls fighting back at this point in the process, usually all it takes is bringing them to orgasm and then bursting them like balloons without giving them time to protest. It’s not sure what to do now. On the other side of the equation, Nepeta is weighing whether to just bring the claws out now and be done with it. But no, she thinks she has a better idea.

It’s common knowledge that musclebeasts’ grandiose udders are critical erogenous zones, as millennia of blueblood science has attested. Nepeta wonders if this creature’s tentacle-teats have lost that particular characteristic, or if it perhaps is getting some sort of pleasure out of this itself beyond the simple allure of food. She begins gently stroking the bundle of tentacles at her crotch with her thumb, and as she sits up straight begins gently caressing the rest of the mass with her free hand. The udders shudder, and then slowly but surely begin to reform into the image of Equius once more. Nepeta continues.

She pets the vaguely Zahhak-shaped tentacular mass more firmly now, and they begin to lean into her touch. She can hear the great periscope-like head breathing hard somewhere high above her now. The tentacles within her body slide out again with a schlick, original purpose forgotten, and begin trailing languidly over her lower body, leaving wet trails wherever they go. Nepeta’s getting her prey off right now, this has gotta violate someone’s code of ethics somewhere. But hey, it started this.

The beast shudders hard, and suddenly it seems to roll back. Parting its way through a curtain of bioluminescent tentacles, the beast’s actual penis appears. It’s a good foot and a half long, horselike and dripping wet. This thing is fucking desperate, how long has it been since a female of its species came its way? Sweeps, maybe. With hungry motions, hungry in a different sense this time, it pushes Nepeta down on her back to the forest floor and begins frantically smushing its nether head against her crotch. She reaches down to help it and is only beginning to consider concerns about its fitting capabilities when its head pushes in, stretching her to her limit. 

Even with beastly strength behind it the creature’s penis only makes it a quarter of the way into her, and even that is enough to be pretty darn painful for her. Nepeta lets out a few yelps of discomfort as the beast thrusts, but it’s only a few seconds before it reaches climax and spurts an ungodly amount of bestial seed into and over her. It collapses on top of her, vibrating with pleasure.

And before it ever looks up again, six steel claws have been driven through its bulbous udder and into its belly, splitting it from neck to ass. It quivers once, then goes limp, and its blue luminescing udder tentacles slowly fade to black.


	6. Afterglow.

A gargantuan heap of dead beast meat lies in the clearing, silent save for the slow gurgle of indigo blood onto the leaf-strewn forest floor. With some effort a small nude catgirl pulls herself out from under the ruined creature, drenched to the bones in blood and musclebeast semen. Crawling a short distance from the corpse, Nepeta turns over onto her back and lies on the cool earth with her limbs spread, breathing hard and grinning with satisfaction. Catching her breath, Nepeta props herself up on her elbows, looks down towards her feet and chuckles. Seems her claw slash severed the beast’s dick at the base and the tip is still lodged in her opening, slowly softening from the draining blood. 

When she reaches a bloodied hand down and removes the trophy it makes an almost inaudible wet suction sound. She holds the dripping beast component up to her eyes and inspects it, she’s certainly taken worse trophies before. It’ll make a good gift for Equius.

After captchaloguing the severed beast schlong, Nepeta carefully skins and dismembers the creature, organizing its organs into neat piles before captchaloguing them as well. She takes about 20 minutes to lick herself clean from head to toe, contorting herself gymnast-like to reach the trickier spots, before donning her clothes again and starting the trek back to the village.

As Nepeta walks she casually scuffs aside some fallen leaves. It’s in the far corner of her eye and she almost misses it, but when she kicks there’s the barest hint of a bioluminescent blue glow from beneath the leaf litter. She turns around and studies the patch of ground, then crouches down and sweeps some more detritus aside.

It’s a wide nest scraped into the cold earth, filled with dozens and dozens of musclebeast eggs. Each crammed full of a miniature version of the thing she just screwed and/or slew. Looks like that thing was expecting. She lifts one of the eggs up to study it more closely, turning it over and over in her hands, watching the embryo’s little teatacles pulse with cool blue light. She looks off through the trees at the lights of the waiting village. If these things grow up, they’ll surely fall back into their tried-and-true niche of preying on those poor sods, dragging an innocent forest-dweller to their doom once an apogee. She could stop this whole grisly tradition here and now.

But no, as a creature of the wild she cannot bring herself to extinguish an ancient line of beasts forever. This was the most fun she’s had hunting in ages, and she can’t bear the thought of robbing herself and others of that joy in future. She places the egg back in the nest and covers the whole lot up. At least the forest-dwellers should have a few sweeps of peace while these things reach maturity.

\- - -

A few days later, Nepeta arrives safely back at her cave, sylladex heavy with prizes. A week or so after that, Equius Zahhak receives a splendid new taxidermied gift. 

The next apogee, the villagers are relieved and distraught in equal measure when their twilight chanting provokes no response from the deep forest. For now, they are spared from their bloody and passionate ancient ritual. But in the depths of the woods, a blue glow begins to build again.


End file.
